KiasuParents - Parenting in Singapore

The transition from Primary to Secondary can be quite a big jump. Parents and students can consider the following factors when considering whether to have tuition:

- understanding: Does the student understand what the teacher is teaching in school?
- performance (percentile/marks) in key exams: Percentile is sometimes a better gauge than marks of how the student is faring. Low marks may indicate very tough paper rather than any weakness of the student.
- quality of teachers: Ask your child if he feels the teacher is teaching well. If no, some urgent action is needed, be it self-revision from books or tuition.

mathtuition88 wrote: - performance (percentile/marks) in key exams: Percentile is sometimes a better gauge than marks of how the student is faring. Low marks may indicate very tough paper rather than any weakness of the student.

Only true when it is low marks. DS has one subject in which he got 3.6 in GPA but it put him in the bottom 20% of the cohort for that subject.

I always look at median marks

Tuition will be more beneficial to students who struggle in certain subjects, and certainly not a must have for all subjects. Should the child have tuition in all/most subjects, it might even lead to a crutch mentality where the child feels that he or she does not need to pay attention during lessons as the tutor can always be depended on for help after school. It will be good to speak to the form teachers when the exam results are out for any strategies to help the child.

It really depends on the student him/her self, some students find it a struggle coping with the increase in difficulty in some of the topics however some students are able to grasp the concepts easily and also are independent learners:) U can let the student study on his/her own for awhile and monitor the situation

as long as the student is not failing, should not be necessary, in sec 1 they don't have much attention span, so tuition would not be recommended

When my dd1 was in sec 1, I let her try and get used to the sec sch curriculum for 1/2 a year first before considering if tuition is necessary.

skchiu wrote:as long as the student is not failing, should not be necessary, in sec 1 they don't have much attention span, so tuition would not be recommended

if the student is not failing, then tuition can hold back...besides, there are 7-8 subjects excluding CCA. so secondary 1 students may need time to rest and get homework done.

I just made sure that my son keeps up to his homework schedule. By Sec Three, I let go and let him autopilot. He learnt a good lesson not studying the 5th subject well. I gave him chinese tuition - he still flopped. He had his cousin coach him in T3 in the Arts - which I stopped when he didn't do her assignments.

He ended up in ITE Nitec but studied hard and won 2 Edusave awards in 1 year. He is likely to skip year 1 in Higher Nitec. We have learnt to discuss issues and choices, and he too thinks that the year in HNitec will be good even if his GPA allows him to go direct into poly.

The big joke is that friends of his went to Sec 5, but he will be on par with them next year as he is likely to do well enough to skip yr 1 in HNitec.

The keys to success:
Helping our kids make their own decisions
Allowing them to fail but be there for them to cry on our shoulders
Be their sounding board
Allow them to stand on their own two feet
Know your child's present capabilities and potential well - it's a race against himself and not others

After going through that stage of poor academic results, I look back and thought to myself maybe the problem lies with my time management. I was always a very active child, playing sports, hanging out with friends and finding new stuff to do.

Abit of background information: I was in the NA stream from sec 1-2, promoted to express from sec 3 onwards. Up till date, I have completed my University education with honours.

My cycle of secondary 1 goes like this: Wakes up at 630am, reach school by 730am, ends school at 230pm, CCA starts at 330pm till 5pm, hangs out with friend till 6pm, be back by 630 for dinner. Tuition at 7pm onwards.

Alternatively, I was staying back in school playing sports till evening time.

I felt like nobody taught me time management when I was younger. But a good way I could have done when I was younger was to be more objectively focused on a particular thing I was doing. Especially the tuition part....I was always feeling SO TIRED during tuition time because the teacher was just plain boring and kept going in circles. If only I had the tuition that focused on helping me understand the particular subject by teaching the main points before school actually taught them.

In point, I think having tuition is good in secondary 1 if the teacher focuses mainly on objective based curriculum learning by having a proper topic management system and not "helping" you to pull up your marks by teaching what you do not know. It is necessary to build a good educational and character foundation and will also help to teach the kid management skills which will come handy in the near future.